Research: Development of effective learning environments that develop adaptive expertise. This research focuses on the mechanisms and knowledge to comprehend, analyze, troubleshoot and design complex systems, exploring how these mechanisms mature and how we can foster developing these abilities through learning activities that use simulations, analogical reasoning, and model construction/evaluation.

Research: Development and validation of assessment tools within K-12, undergraduate, and graduate engineering education; assessment of engineering doctoral education; undergraduate and graduate students' acquisition of engineering norms, skills, and attributes within academia and industry; assessment of pedagogy within engineering classrooms and laboratories

Research: Use of qualitative methods to investigate engineering epistemology, engineering identity, and boundary work to understand better how to make engineering an inclusive discipline. Crossing the boundaries of engineering education, science and technology studies, and women's studies, this research focuses on how, what, and why we (engineers and engineering educators) understand engineering to be.

Kamyar Haghighi Head of the School of Engineering EducationEpistemology Professor of Engineering Education

Research: The nature of engineering as a profession; how it perceived and practiced, how it is learned especially outside the classroom, and how an engineering identity is shaped. The design of creative learning places and of ways to foster distributed communities of research practice in engineering education.

Research: Building rigorous research capabilities in engineering education. The role of cooperation in learning and design. Problem formulation, modeling, and knowledge engineering. Project and knowledge management and leadership.

Research: Difficult concepts in engineering science. Specific research questions are: What concepts are difficult to learn? How does one measure conceptual understanding? Why are some concepts difficult to learn? How can one construct learning environments that help people learn these difficult concepts?